IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Wallingford Road, LEICESTER, LE4 5RD

1891 sewage pumping station with 4 Gimson Woolf compound beam engines in one room. Now Leicester museum of Technology and a kissing cousin of the National Space Centre (which reminds me of the erotic gherkin in London). Abbey Lane has its own polygonal erotic symbol. Clay Mills sewage pumping station, Burton (q.v.) has four slightly larger Gimson Woolf compound beam engines.

The National Space Centre seen from the, next door, Abbey Pumping Station.

Several of the movable exhibits are on display in the open.

Possibly an old pumping engine, seen the in Abbey pumping stores building. Also a couple of smaller diesels, possibly from mills (email for pictures).

Aveling & Porter No. 3319 of 1894. A single cylinder 5 NHP roller weighing 10 tons. Anyone interested in road steam should get hold of the Traction Engine Register, not least because it allows you to get engine details from the registration number (as in this case).

Ordnance Survey cut mark benchmark described on the Bench Mark Database at https://www.bench-marks.org.uk/bm102374

Visiting attractions included the Bakanalia morris dancers, under the crane.

Preserved in the museum grounds is this important example of a class of turbine that has now been passed by. The vast majority of turbines pass the steam through sets of blades arranged along the long axis of the machine - axial flow. Very large turbines can be made this way - 1700MW or more. The Ljungstrom turbines passes the steam radially, perpendicular to the long axis, from centre to periphery through blades arranged in rings on two contra-rotating, interleaved rotors. Each rotor drives an alternator and these would be synchronised together to keep a constant speed. This is a small example of 1MW and the design was physically constrained to no more than about 50MW (with axial terminal stages). The Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester had one on display with the top cover off and the museum store in Swansea has a loose rotor assembly. Unfortunately the Manchester Museum closed its electricity gallery in 2016 - a sad loss. This one was built under license by Brush at Loughborough in 1914 and used in Loughborough power station.

Historic vehicle parade with two French built Panhards to the fore. This was one of the oldest car marques in the world but was later absorbed into Citroen. The weather was rather variable for this major event and it had been raining hard.